MongoDB Major Change to Licensing
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
The intent is, if you sell a service to a THIRD PARTY, that you need to purchase a license or open source your shit.
Pretty straightforward.
No, not straight forward, it doesn't say sell, it is providing and not being open source. And it isn't straight forward because it's poor legal language and potentially ambiguous. You have to remember that if ever it came up in arbitration, as most technical disagreements do, the judge or whomever is likely to not going to understand the distinction. Just because it's closed source doesn't mean it's being sold.
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@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
It's targeting profitiers, not internal uses.
Those are one and the same. No one runs software internally if not for profit from doing so. You can't find a way to differentiate these two.
Sure I can, MongoDB and my company "Dustin's Dough" have a database.
My customers aren't accessing that database. Hence no third party, hence no need to open source everything or purchase a license.
That clearly doesn't clearly protect you. And what about the internal users?
Internal users aren't paying customers! FFS!
@JaredBusch get in here.
Sometimes not, sometimes they are, but why does that matter? The license doesn't say paying customers, you said that. But it's not a factor here.
Nearly all internal users are paying customers in real businesses, how could they not be?
"as a Service"
You can offer "dicks as a Service", and would then be required to offer your source code.
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If Dustin buys software X for his company, which is closed source, and chooses to deploy MongoDB as his database, once any user (e.g. customer, or third party) person inside his company accesses that system, he has run afoul of the "as a service" and the "third party" wording. No money changes hands, no selling, no outside people.
Now he has to provide source code that he does not own.
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
It's targeting profitiers, not internal uses.
Those are one and the same. No one runs software internally if not for profit from doing so. You can't find a way to differentiate these two.
Sure I can, MongoDB and my company "Dustin's Dough" have a database.
My customers aren't accessing that database. Hence no third party, hence no need to open source everything or purchase a license.
That clearly doesn't clearly protect you. And what about the internal users?
Internal users aren't paying customers! FFS!
@JaredBusch get in here.
Sometimes not, sometimes they are, but why does that matter? The license doesn't say paying customers, you said that. But it's not a factor here.
Nearly all internal users are paying customers in real businesses, how could they not be?
"as a Service"
You can offer "dicks as a Service", and would then be required to offer your source code.
Exactly, nothing in there about selling or third parties or outside companies.
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@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
If Dustin buys software X for his company, which is closed source, and chooses to deploy MongoDB as his database, once any user (e.g. customer, or third party) person inside his company accesses that system, he has run afoul of the "as a service" and the "third party" wording. No money changes hands, no selling, no outside people.
Now he has to provide source code that he does not own.
Third party in this case is clearly not employes of the same company that created whatever magical interface is using the MongoDB.
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Remember that "as a service" is a requirement for the definition of cloud computing, and the majority of cloud computing is internal and not to outside companies and not with money changing hands. The BULK of "as a service" doesn't comply with the selling / outside customer assumption that you are making.
It's a common approach, but not the most common approach. The majority of software "as a service" is from the IT department to the rest of the company.
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
If Dustin buys software X for his company, which is closed source, and chooses to deploy MongoDB as his database, once any user (e.g. customer, or third party) person inside his company accesses that system, he has run afoul of the "as a service" and the "third party" wording. No money changes hands, no selling, no outside people.
Now he has to provide source code that he does not own.
Third party in this case is clearly not employes of the same company that created whatever magical interface is using the MongoDB.
Not clear in any way whatsoever. Please show where in that license it made third party defined?
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@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
Remember that "as a service" is a requirement for the definition of cloud computing, and the majority of cloud computing is internal and not to outside companies and not with money changing hands. The BULK of "as a service" doesn't comply with the selling / outside customer assumption that you are making.
It's a common approach, but not the most common approach. The majority of software "as a service" is from the IT department to the rest of the company.
Yes, and internal employees are not 3rd party to the MongoDB and the Business who created a piece of software internally and use it internally as they (that business) are 1 entity.
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God damn I want to be at the first litigation of this license.
FFS.
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Legal definition...
third party
n. a person who is not a party to a contract or a transaction, but has an involvement (such as a buyer from one of the parties, was present when the agreement was signed, or made an offer that was rejected). The third party normally has no legal rights in the matter, unless the contract was made for the third party's benefit.
In a contract, the term third party does not even imply, let alone mean, an outside company.
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
Remember that "as a service" is a requirement for the definition of cloud computing, and the majority of cloud computing is internal and not to outside companies and not with money changing hands. The BULK of "as a service" doesn't comply with the selling / outside customer assumption that you are making.
It's a common approach, but not the most common approach. The majority of software "as a service" is from the IT department to the rest of the company.
Yes, and internal employees are not 3rd party to the MongoDB and the Business who created a piece of software internally and use it internally as they (that business) are 1 entity.
Legally they are, and that is very clear from legal terms. I don't know where you are getting this, but there are no grounds for thinking that internal users are not third party.
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@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
Remember that "as a service" is a requirement for the definition of cloud computing, and the majority of cloud computing is internal and not to outside companies and not with money changing hands. The BULK of "as a service" doesn't comply with the selling / outside customer assumption that you are making.
It's a common approach, but not the most common approach. The majority of software "as a service" is from the IT department to the rest of the company.
Yes, and internal employees are not 3rd party to the MongoDB and the Business who created a piece of software internally and use it internally as they (that business) are 1 entity.
Legally they are, and that is very clear from legal terms. I don't know where you are getting this, but there are no grounds for thinking that internal users are not third party.
A business creates something.
That business in legal terms is it's own entity (living breathing creature with rights).
That business can sign contracts, get loans, be held legally responsible etc.
Where the fuck are you getting that an individual employee who uses a service that a Business Entity signs a contract for is somehow 3rd party to the contract between MongoDB and the Business, when that employee works for the Business?
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It's reasonable to assume that MongoDB didn't intend to screw up their license and thought that third party might only mean people from another company, but that would imply that their lawyer was pretty clueless and no one reviewed this. It's pretty clear that they have done nothing to provide any clarity that would be required to believe that they truly intended to limit this in that way.
The license is written with what appears pretty clear intent to be overly broad and basically allow for litigation against everyone that doesn't buy the commercial license. The degree to which this license covers any possible use case is unprecedented.
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@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@DustinB3403 said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
Remember that "as a service" is a requirement for the definition of cloud computing, and the majority of cloud computing is internal and not to outside companies and not with money changing hands. The BULK of "as a service" doesn't comply with the selling / outside customer assumption that you are making.
It's a common approach, but not the most common approach. The majority of software "as a service" is from the IT department to the rest of the company.
Yes, and internal employees are not 3rd party to the MongoDB and the Business who created a piece of software internally and use it internally as they (that business) are 1 entity.
Legally they are, and that is very clear from legal terms. I don't know where you are getting this, but there are no grounds for thinking that internal users are not third party.
A business creates something.
That business in legal terms is it's own entity (living breathing creature with rights).
That business can sign contracts, get loans, be held legally responsible etc.
Where the fuck are you getting that an individual employee who uses a service that a Business Entity signs a contract for is somehow 3rd party to the contract between MongoDB and the Business?
A person inside a business is another party. For example, your employment agreements are between one party and a company. That all staff are the "party" and not third parties doesn't really make sense. Because you can't make a contract with yourself.
And while you can argue that W2 employees aren't third party (but I doubt anyone would agree), you can't argue that 1099 staff are not a third party, as they are a separate company.
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I think this describes my position best...
I think that the true intent of the license was to trick people into thinking that the intent was to cover only limited scenarios. But no law firm would have been so clumsy if that was the goal for real. In reality, I think the intent was to actually cover anything and everything while providing plausible deniability as to how evil the license is in reality.
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@scottalanmiller said in MongoDB Major Change to Licensing:
I think this describes my position best...
I think that the true intent of the license was to trick people into thinking that the intent was to cover only limited scenarios. But no law firm would have been so clumsy if that was the goal for real. In reality, I think the intent was to actually cover anything and everything while providing plausible deniability as to how evil the license is in reality.
I agree, that was my impression simply on first reading it.
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Bottom line, intent doesn't matter, what it says, does. And what is says is clear: MongoDB needs to be forked, the original company left behind to whither and fade, and no project or deployment should consider using MongoDB in the future.
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Someone should fork it and use an SSLS-like license that says that if MongoDB uses anything from the new fork that they are forced to open source all that closed source special sauce they are trying to misdirect everyone from looking at.
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This change literally impacts one of my customers who is deploying NodeBB modules being done in house.
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I would very easily challenge this, that 3rd party is anyone outside of the company employees that is accessing any service that uses a MongoDB.
And while it's very likely the intent of the license may have been to act as you describe I read it differently.
